Saiyuki Drabbles
by incandescens
Summary: Various Saiyuki drabbles different themes, different time periods, different levels of humour. Note I'm traditional. My drabbles are 100 words precisely.
1. necessary things

**necessary things**

It was one of those nights.

Hakkai checked the steamed buns.

He knew where everyone was. It was automatic by this point. Gojou was out wailing at the moon and flirting with anything remotely female, Sanzou was resolutely pretending that the rest of the world didn't exist while eyeing his newspaper, and Gokuu was curled up in a corner napping.

Such petty things. Such instinctive behaviour. Such focus on personal affairs and casual pique.

He checked the steamed buns once more, then neatly brushed his hair back and straightened the fall of his sash.

These things were important, after all.


	2. AU: Taroticum: The Chariot

**Taroticum: The Chariot**

They went out of Heaven together; the _itan_ boy, the decorated military officer, the reckless individualist, the well-born young man so fenced around with loneliness. They went into the mortal world and left behind their memories, their names, everything except their own selves.

Later on, the three they'd left behind followed them, hot on the trail of the four who burned so brightly amid the mortal darkness. And from time to time they wondered -- Konzen, Tenpou, Kenren -- could they have chosen differently five hundred years ago?

Of course not. Nothing can restore a star once it has fallen.


	3. Real Men Don't Ask For Directions

**Real men don't ask for directions**

Following the Sanzou-ikkou, appearing with menacing regularity when least expected (though always attractively backlit), Homura and his minions trailed them cross-country, with occasional pauses to drape themselves elegantly around their captured youkai castle.

"They're taking their time," Homura complained. "Can't they go a bit faster?"

"More useful if they went in a straight line," Zenon snarled.

Shien coughed. "You recall that Marshal Tenpou is driving?"

"Oh yeah," Zenon said slowly. "Good old What-Mountains?-Tenpou, they used to call him."

Homura blinked. "I thought that was heroic disregard for geography."

Shien shook his head. "It was being unable to read the map."


	4. exit, pursued by a hero

**Exit, pursued by a hero**

And as the jeep finally turned round and began to trundle eastward, a muttered conversation drifted after it at ground level from the ruins of the castle.

"We wuz robbed."

"Yeah."

"There wuz hundreds of us. Thousands."

"Yeah."

"We should of kicked ass."

"My bruvver --"

"What about ya bruvver?"

"My bruvver was with them orcs at that Moria place. He said it happened there too. Thousands of us and then the nine of them gets out and all."

"I call it discrimination, I does."

"Yeah."

"We need a new gig."

"There's this white witch hiring down the road . . ."


	5. it's for father

**It's for Father**

Litouten is everything to Nataku. Nataku can't imagine a world without his father there. Father loves him, Father cares for him, Father is god and emperor and ruler and kindness and a chain around his heart.

Sometimes he feels that he's suffocating, that Father's love weighs on his shoulders like a robe of solid gold, and it takes everything he has not to go down on one knee and ask for a single moment's respite. He gives it freely. It's for Father.

Nataku looks at the world through golden eyes. He sees Father. Father sees him. There isn't anything else.

---


	6. and bang

**and bang**

Homura shapes his own universe in his dreams. He will have this; he will not have that. All things will be just, equable, _fair_.

There will be fields of flowers.

He defines the walls of his world; he conquers a king's tower and assumes it like a robe, dwells in it like a hermit crab, thrusts out its children like a cuckoo.

He steals the sutras to rewrite heaven and earth.

Despair has taught him that nothing is his own; therefore he builds a bubble from the dreams others give him, and waits in the knowledge that it must burst.


	7. cancel the ding dong

**cancel the ding dong**

"It has been discovered," the Three Aspects pronounced, "that Genjou Sanzou was, in a previous incarnation, betrothed to this ghost -- ah, ghosts -- who throng before us and present legal claims."

"There had better be a solution to this," Sanzou said ominously.

"Well, the usual response is to hold a wedding ceremony between the new incarnation and the ghost . . ."

"Nice temple you've got here," Sanzou remarked. "Be a shame if the Seiten Taisei happened to it."

"Or," the Aspects announced hastily, "we need someone to go West on a little mission for us."

Sanzou considered. "Deal."

---


	8. not with a bang but a fizzle

**not with a bang but a fizzle**

"Explain again," Kougaiji said patiently.

Doku shrugged. "Power cut," he said succinctly. "Gyumaoh dead and rotting."

"You could have done that in two words," Yaone muttered, holding her nose.

Kougaiji eyed his two servants, both of whom were too busy staring at the opposite wall to look him in the eye. "Now. Let's try this one again. How."

"Well," Yaone started.

"That is," Doku continued.

"It seems that Nii-hakase makes an extremely poor fuse." Yaone finished.

"And Gyokumen?"

Doku smirked. "Traumatised. She broke a nail."

"And the Sanzou-ikkou?"

Yaone blushed. "Have found other things to do with the lights off."

---


	9. pretty flowers

**pretty flowers**

"But they look so pretty!" Goku objected, gesturing at the field of poppies in front of them.

"We go round," Sanzou said firmly, taking a drag of his reassuringly bitter cigarette.

Gojou was curled up in the back seat, head buried in a porn magazine, attempting to avoid a nervous breakdown.

"Oh yes," Hakkai agreed. "You may not know this, Gokuu, but sometimes poppies like this can be so powerful that they could make us all fall asleep. Think how dangerous that would be."

Gokuu thought. "Would there be supper afterwards?"

Elsewhere, Gyokumen sighed. "Nii-hakase? Forget about the flying monkeys."

---


	10. AU: Taroticum: The Fool

**Taroticum: The Fool**

A spray of bullets ripped through the youkai, turning them to powder. 

Gokuu gripped the bars of his cage. "Who -- who's there?"

A robed figure stepped into view. "So you're the one that I was sent to find. The one who knows the truth behind the Heaven Conspiracy, the Gyumaoh Resurrection, and the War God Armageddon. Not to mention the Cicada Disappearance, the Dragon King Banishment, and the Bodhisattva Peaches Affair."

"It's true!" Gokuu gasped. "But -- I'm very hungry. And who are you?"

"They call me Sanzou. Genjou Sanzou." Light glinted off the man's gun. "Licensed to kill."


	11. from one house to another

**from one house to another**

Now that the rain has stopped, the frogs are croaking, hiccupping loudly and happily in the long grass by the pond.

Hakkai hears them as he throws open the kitchen window to catch the fresh air, and hates them. It is a hate full of bloody edges, honed by recent memory.

First, that anyone could delight so much in the rain.

Second, that they can sing so well about it.

Third, that they do it while he is still in pain.

By the time that Gojou comes staggering home that evening, the pond has faded from scarlet to dull brown.


	12. gratification

**gratification  
**  
"Hakkai?"

"Yes, Gokuu?"

"What were all those noises last night?"

"Gojou fell over."

"But he was going straight up to bed!"

"So he was."

"But what did he fall over?"

"Me."

"But why was there so much screaming?"

"_I_ wasn't screaming."

"And the crunching?"

"That was the bedframe."

"And the whimpering noises?"

"I'm sure there was a perfectly good reason for them."

"And the begging for mercy?"

"Was very gratifying."

"And, um . . . er, why was that woman who went upstairs with Gojou found hanging from the windowsill by her fingernails?"

"Dear me, Gokuu. How should I know?"

---


	13. some people get a season ticket

**some people get a season ticket**

"Took your time." A curl of cigarette smoke.

"This is the first time . . . I've done this." A wondering tone, as the boy looks round at the shadows.

"Stick with us, kid." A swig of beer. "We know the routine."

"Indeed we do." A habitual gesture, a neatening of cuffs.

"So what are we going to try this time?"

"Can't try and claim Mr Holiness here is a god. Hardly surprising it failed last -- ow!"

"Shut your damn mouth. Any ideas, Hakkai?"

"Well, Jiipu isn't very keen on charging the gates of Hell . . ."

"Meep?"

---


	14. a thousand fathoms under ice

**a thousand fathoms under ice**

Konzen's eyes are like drowned violets caught in puddles of ice.

Tenpou saw them at the edge of a battlefield, after the fighting was done. The flowers had blossomed, but then the spring rain had drowned them, turning cartwheel ruts into tiny lakes, and the sudden cold winds had frozen the water into translucent crystal.

"Oi," Kenren said, coming up behind him. "We ought to be getting back, Marshal. The men are talking about a cup of wine, and I'm thinking that sounds like a good idea."

"Or yakitori," Tenpou said, smiling.

And the flowers suffocate, deep beneath the ice.


	15. And On Day Seven, Garrison Gossip

**And On Day Seven Garrison Gossip Took A Rapid Vacation**

On Day One, garrison gossip informed the world that the General apparently had a lovechild.

On Day Two, garrison gossip totally failed to identify the mother.

On Day Three, garrison gossip speculated Kanzeon Bosatsu, but got shouted down by those who considered themselves to know something about biology and theology.

On Day Four, garrison gossip theorised very quietly _indeed_ about Marshal Tenpou.

On Day Five, garrison gossip bore witness to said lovechild being disowned for perpetuity due to draining the General's private alcohol stocks.

On Day Six, garrison gossip published the collected scrolls, complete with ink paintings and realistic tinting.


	16. regular dosage

**regular dosage**

"I'm sorry," Gokuu said, "They're kinda busy at the moment."

Kougaiji blinked. "Busy?"

"Well, yeah." Gokuu scratched his head. "See, Sanzou found out about the bromide things that medicine-girl was giving Hakkai to give to Gojou --"

"Oops," Yaone blushed innocently.

"-- and see, he didn't mind about Hakkai doing it when Gojou was chasing girls, but he was saying that Hakkai ought to have some damn consideration for his own needs, and Hakkai said that he'd be glad to look after those needs, and then Sanzou started shooting --"

"I think we'll come back tomorrow," Kougaiji said.


	17. last act

**last act**

When you are dead and have made a puppet of your own body, you sometimes wonder who is writing the lines of the play that you're acting out.

Oh, certainly they were good lines. The fortune teller. The mahjong tile. The laughter. The seed, the toy, the slow flutter of hot breath and the dying pulse against tightening hands.

Chin Isou looked into Cho Gonou's eyes -- so beautifully hating, so clear, so utterly fixed on him -- and wondered about puppets and stories and punishments, as Gonou ripped the life out of him and let him fall to dust.

---


	18. everything but the light

**everything but the light**

Ukoku Sanzou's robes are so dark that they blend into the night around the edges, leaving his face and hands visible, floating in the shadows, and his sutra hanging on his shoulders like a frame. His hair, his brows, are dark as ink. A murder of crows sleeps in the trees behind him, waiting for daylight to spread their wings and shriek for blood.

In front of him lies a chessboard, black squares invisible in darkness, white squares forming a floating diagonal pattern against the ground. He extends a hand.

There isn't any sunlight. He left that behind long ago.


	19. AU: Taroticum: The Lovers

**Taroticum: The Lovers**

"Mother died in her sleep," Jien told Gojou the next morning.

Gojou bit his lip and trembled until Jien said, "It's okay to cry, it's okay," and then he wept on Jien's shoulder, childish hands clenching and unclenching in his brother's shirt.

Jien tidied up the body later. Made it decent. Neatened its tangled hair and straightened its dress before the people from the village below came to take it away. They hadn't been surprised.

The body lay there quietly and made no complaints, wept no more tears.

The smear of lipstick on the pillow accused him, red as blood.


	20. things fall apart

**things fall apart**

There's a dark flesh dream madness in the black tower. Sanity's in short supply and running out like wine from a broken cup. The king is dead and yet alive, the prince is utterly mad and yet strangely lucid, and the priest has turned his coat for that of a scientist and brews insanities in the basement. The queen is stone and the concubine has taken her place, the princess has curled up and returned to a womb of glass, and servants betray their masters through both action and inaction.

The sun is coming, slouching westward; it will banish darkness.


End file.
